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Teca
PROTOTYPE PAGE Born a Slavic native of Aquincum (ancient Budapest), their mother died in childbirth and so they were named Teca, which means reaper. Teca was reluctantly raised by their neglectful father, who resented the child for the loss of their mother. Their highly emotionally volatile, traumatized, and sensitive state left them vulnerable to all the magic of that region. Haunted from childhood by a Nocnitsa, a nightmare spirit taking the form of an old hag who sits on a sleeper's chest at night to draw out “life energy” and trap their victim in terrible dreams, they suffered from periodic night terrors and insomnia in response to the ever-unsafe realm of their dreams. Eventually Teca was allowed to become an apprentice to a blacksmith, an old man who forged for the Roman military presence in Aquincum. When he asked them one morning why they had been screaming in their sleep, they finally told someone other than their dismissive father about the Nocnitsa. To the child's surprise, they were given a cold iron knife by the man, which he said would protect them from the spirit if they drew a circle around their bed with it and then slept with it by their side. For ten years they were untroubled by the Nocnitsa, but not entirely free of the insomnia she had engendered. Then, they lost the knife at age 25, when it was gathered by accident by a new apprentice who was packing up an order for the Roman army. Just as Teca realized that the knife was gone the spirit, who had been waiting ten years for her opportunity to strike, appeared and kidnapped them. The night hag was enraged that they'd found a way to block her from visiting and was cruel and gleeful in her retaliation. They were made to break into houses, steal things from other Gentry, accompany her to various occasions (usually wearing the stolen articles for their previous owners to throw a fit about), and help her scare and haunt her victims. They were a trinket, a tool, and a plaything in turns. The old hag was also obsessed with stealing shiny objects and bits of clothing to create adornments of the sort only a fae could love, and she dressed Teca up however she felt like at all times. But during one of their break-ins, rifling through the possessions of an herbalist and apothecary owner, they stumbled upon notes about dealing with the Fae and discovered that the Nocnitsa’s other weakness was a stone with a hole worn through the middle of it. And lo and behold, there along with the items of interest they found a stone with a hole worn through it! They of course instantly stole it instead and used it to frighten the old hag and escape their durance. It turned out upon their return that they’d spent 50 years in Arcadia, but only 4 had passed in the human world. Teca joined the Moon Court, the impulse-driven and aggressively shameless of the two Diurnal Courts seated in Aquincum, having come to understand the great powers of dreams and darkness and also having been adopted by others of the Wayward Path very quickly upon re-entering the world. Their resentment of humankind was seated in their own terrible experiences of being blamed and scapegoated, shunned and shamed, and they began to slip away from their own humanity. Eventually they took to paid thievery and smuggling, those being their primary skill sets. They also took up fighting with two long ink-black knives (one does not go long among the courtiers of the Moon without learning to defend oneself.) For about a year they followed the Wayward Path all the way to Rome, one impulse after another, until they were captured by a band of privateers who knew to take them during the daylight when their powers of darkness were diminished. It turned out they had been seeking Teca because of their reputation- and because of the reputation of Merula, whom they figured would snap up the Darkling for her menagerie of supernatural servants before they could be revived enough to slip away into the night. But the vampiress was of course very savvy, and knew that the privateers had brought her a Changeling she could not long retain by any physical means. So, she tricked Teca by murdering their captors-- causing them to become so grateful that, with a slip of the tongue, they promised to do anything she wanted in return. And so by the bond of that pledge, Teca is in service once again. But this time their anger and magic have them straining against the incorporeal confines of their promise.